Remember when your laundry and dishwasher detergents actually worked? Phosphates weren't doing good things for the rivers and bays that our wastewater gets dumped into, because algae blooms like nothing better than a nice shot of fertilizer. Municipal systems concentrate on removing pathogens like e. coli and largely ignore nitrates and phosphates. If you're like me, though, and send your wastewater to a septic tank, all phosphates do is make the grass happier in the south meadow. So I'm free to add tri-sodium phosphate back into my detergents. Like magic, the stains are coming out of my cotton t-shirts and my dishes--even that pesky tupperware--come clean without any oily film. Hardware stores carry TSP, or you can easily buy it online and have it shipped.
Now if only my toilets would flush the way they used to. Well, it's my own fault for not installing composting toilets when we built here.
TSPs are also great corrosion inhibitors in nuclear reactors.
ReplyDeleteIt's a household multitasker. Our nuclear reactor's not functioning just now, but TSP is an excellent mildew killer and paint-deglosser, which is why your hardware/paint store carries it.
ReplyDeleteI do hope it's not giving the microbeasties in my septic tank indigestion.
Algae blooms are a convenient way of clearing water of phosphate, fixing nitrogen, and producing a very useful fertilizer. It takes some planning, and a little knowledge of biology, chemistry, and engineering, but nothing special.
ReplyDeleteIt's too bad the enviros won't listen to scientists.
Valerie
The suds probably had more to do with the legislation than algae. Suds make for dramatic TV and news-magazine photos, and the algae was just a follow-up. But I'd have to go back and check my books to be sure.
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1
I confess I'd be happy to see widespread changes in how we treat municipal wastewater, or for that matter agricultural runoff. Our water treatment system in this country is insane in a way that fiddling around with the components of detergent is never going to fix. Using potable water to transport sewage miles away to a plant, forsooth! People worry about how much water a fracking operation uses, but it's the remotest fraction of what's befouled by agriculture and municipal water systems.
ReplyDeleteI know there are better ways to treat wastewater. My father-in-law operated a private bio-treatment plant for years, making a good living from it. He was no kind of a visionary greenie, just a competent chemical engineer.
Here in California the "TSP" sold in the stores is not the real thing. If you look carefully, the label says TSP substitute. I don't know about other states. You should be able to get the real thing from a chemical company, though. "Technical" grade would be the cheapest.
ReplyDelete"California, where even the additives that you have to add, to make up for the stuff that used to work and doesn't any more, are fake and don't work either! Because trust us, you didn't really want it to work!"
ReplyDeleteAmazon can ship you the real stuff, if they haven't agreed with the state of California not to do it, that is.